Call for Contributors: A Volume on Teaching Race in the Renaissance

Edited by Anna Wainwright, University of New Hampshire
Matthieu Chapman, University of Houston

Race is a hot button issue all over the globe. From Black Lives Matter and immigration policies in the US, to Germany announcing that multiculturalism has “failed,” to Meghan Markle radically changing the face of the British monarchy and challenging England’s longstanding obsession with the "Blood Royal" by becoming the first black member of the royal family, many nations are struggling to address the ways in which race, and the conflicts surrounding race, affect both people and society. Often, these countries seek to address race as a purely contemporary issue that exists in an ahistorical vacuum without addressing the historical foundations, processes, and structures that led to these current situations. Although race is often viewed as a contemporary issue, many of the ideas, notions, and constructs of race that affect our world today exist within a continuum that began in the Renaissance.

Over the past 30 years, the field of Renaissance Race Studies has seen a steady increase in interest among scholars and students. We are seeking contributors for an edited textbook on philosophies, methodologies, pedagogies, and case studies that present innovative classroom approaches to teaching race in the Global Renaissance. This interdisciplinary volume, which will be submitted to the University of Toronto Press, welcomes submissions from literature, theatre and performance, musicology, history, art history, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and any other discipline that utilizes the Renaissance as a temporal frame. The book seeks to provide both students and teachers with the resources and foundation to navigate from a variety of angles and entry points the varying discourses, intersections, conflicts, concepts, and problems that arise when discussing the topic of race in the Renaissance, and its links to today’s world.
The book will contain five sections designated by geography: British Isles (including early English colonies), Italy, Iberia (including New Spain and the Spanish Colonies), France, and the Ottoman Empire. The concept of “Renaissance” is to be broadly construed to take into account the shifting dates of the Renaissance from country to country across the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Each section will contain three different subsections consisting of:

1. Case Studies:
These are 4,000-6,000-word essays that tackle the questions “How do you address texts, discourses, or histories of race in your classroom?”, “How do you engage and educate audiences about race in the Renaissance?”, or “How do you connect the study of race to other constructs—gender/sexuality, class, nation, and others—and their role in Renaissance culture and politics?” by offering a specific methodology for approaching the discussion of race and then applying that methodology to a specific object, event, or person or set of objects, events, or persons.
Each case study should be accompanied by the following:
a. 1-3 images that are relevant to the case study
i. These can be artistic depictions, primary source documents, maps, or any other relevant image.
b. 3-4 questions to help spark classroom discussions
c. A list of additional reading

2. Connected Histories
These are 2,000-4,000-word essays that link two or more regions discussed in the book to one another during the Renaissance through their shared conceptions of race or specific people, events, or objects that reflect those conceptions of race.
a. These should also be accompanied by 2-4 discussion questions.

3. Cultural Memory
These are 2,000-4,000-word essays that show how these early modern conceptions of race continue to have resonance in today’s world.
a. These should also be accompanied by 2-4 discussion questions.

Please submit a title, 200-300-word abstract that specifies for which portion you would like to be considered, and short bio (200 words max) to anna.wainwrightunh.edu and machapm4central.uh.edu by August 1, 2018. If your abstract is selected and a contract granted, completed articles will be due to the editors by the end of Summer 2019.